Île de Ré
— — white walls, green shutters, and a salt wind off the marsh.
Not only on a wall.
“A long flat island off the Atlantic coast, reached by a 2.9-kilometre bridge from La Rochelle. White-washed villages with green shutters — Saint-Martin-de-Ré, Ars-en-Ré, La Flotte — sit between salt marshes and oyster beds. The lighthouse at the western tip is called Phare des Baleines, the Whales' Light. Cycle paths run the length of the island, mostly flat, mostly through vineyards and pine. from the studio
Île de Ré, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Île de Ré is an island in the Pertuis d'Antioche, off the Atlantic coast of Charente-Maritime in western France. It runs roughly 30 km east to west and 5 km at its widest, with a total area of 85 square kilometres and a year-round population of about 18,000. A 2.9-kilometre toll bridge, opened in 1988, links it to La Rochelle. Ten communes share the island; Saint-Martin-de-Ré is the principal town and its seventeenth-century fortifications by Vauban are part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing of Vauban's defensive works.
Two waters define Ré. On the southern shore lie the oyster parks of Fier d'Ars, a shallow lagoon enclosed by sandbars where some 8,000 tonnes of oysters are raised each year — the huîtres carry the Marennes-Oléron protected appellation. On the northern marsh, the salt pans of the saliculteurs are still worked by hand: about a hundred sauniers harvest fleur de sel and gros sel from 700 hectares between June and September. The Atlantic Ocean meets the rest, and the western beaches face open water across the Bay of Biscay.
Ré is best in late spring and early autumn. July and August bring the island's population to roughly 220,000 and the cycle paths fill; mid-September empties them. The bridge is tolled — around €8 in low season and €16 in summer for cars, free for cyclists — and many visitors leave the car at La Rochelle and ride across. Phare des Baleines, the 57-metre lighthouse at the western tip, has guided ships since 1854; the 257 steps to the lantern remain open to climbers in the summer months.